There was a time when visiting the toilet was a way to avoid doing work while still at work; that's all about to change.

According to the Internet Advertising Bureau, Britons are looking at their mobile devices an average of 34 times a day. Clever employers keen to make the most of our habit of obsessively tapping on our phones every second we don't have anything to do are now providing employees with task-specific apps that let us do work from anywhere. This is enabling a whole new way of working by offering up so-called micro-moments of productivity. This means that not even the toilet can be considered a work-free zone any more.

This is all part of a larger trend that has developed around the rise of enterprise apps, the work-related version of the smartphone apps that have changed the way we live our private lives. IT firm IDC projects reported that in 2015 the number of mobile workers will surpass 1.3 billion, which will create a huge market for this new industry. This year we will therefore see an explosion of products, services and experiences that enable smartphone users to embrace this new era of mobile hyper-tasking.

Increasing productivity

A study commissioned by Salesforce.com suggests that 60% of British employees now use apps on mobile devices for work-related activity and nearly a quarter (21%) use dedicated department-specific business apps. As a result, enterprise apps boost worker productivity by more then 34%.

Adam Spearing, assistant vice-president of platform for EMEA at salesforce.com, explains what business users and developers should think about when building apps for micro-moments:

1. The user experience: How can I enhance an existing process and make it mobile-first? Can I use geo-location and the camera on a mobile phone to snap a picture of a defective product, tag it with the city I'm in and immediately submit it to the company's incident management system, all within a micro-moment and the tap of a finger?

2. Design: This goes hand-in-hand with user experience. Today's killer mobile apps are a joy to use. They blend ease of use with modern design, making it possible to be productive even when on a crowded bus, on the Tube as it rounds a corner or in the back of a cab weaving through rush hour.

3. Concept: Micro-moment functions should be short and snappy and not overwhelm users with too much information – one screen to give enough information to make a decision and one thumb tap should be all it takes to take an action. Ease of use is crucial, a consideration that all app builders need to balance alongside the users' desire for a consistent and familiar app experience across all devices.

Putting into practice

One company that has embraced enterprise apps is waste management firm The Green House. They carry out thousands of collections every week from companies in central London such as Porsche, Body Shop and Café Nero. Co-founder and development director Philip Mossop gives an example of where they used an enterprise app to enable micro moments of productivity; "Each morning, our drivers check their vehicles before they start their shift. How much fuel is in the tank? Is the tyre pressure OK? What's the mileage? Any cracks in the mirrors? etc. Previously our drivers used pen and paper to file their reports so the whole process took a lot of time."

The company now has a completely bespoke mobile solution for their morning vehicle checks. Drivers now simply open an app on their smartphone, tap to create a new record, tick the relevant boxes and submit to the system. Nothing has to be typed up, nothing gets lost.

The Green House have also developed apps for other specific tasks, including reporting on road blocks and approving quotations. The app for the latter has reduced the time needed to approve a quote from five hours to only 22 minutes, meaning that they now are able to provide a quote to the customer within an hour of them requesting it.

Security concerns

With more data in more places one might think that a company's IT system could be more exposed in this de-centralised app world.

According to Peter Grant, chief executive of CloudApps, a London-based enterprise app maker, this won't be the case: "If the app is using the cloud then everything is safely stored on a central server. Minimal data is stored on the actual device, so as long as the right operational processes are in place to reset passwords and delete accounts when users leave, lose devices or upgrade to replacement devices, then everything should remain safe and sound."

It seems that the only way employees will be able to revolt against this is by inventing micro-moments of procrastination.